


ring the bells that still can ring

by paperiuni



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Character Study, Coda, Friendship/Love, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:27:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22867867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperiuni/pseuds/paperiuni
Summary: It's the first night after the war, and Poe is in over his head. Finn and Rey offer a helping hand.
Relationships: Poe Dameron & Finn & Rey, Poe Dameron/Finn/Rey
Comments: 29
Kudos: 90





	ring the bells that still can ring

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gaywoodandbine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaywoodandbine/gifts).



> I left the theatre after TROS with That Hug burned onto my eyelids, watched the clip of it about three thousand times, and then worked out all (some of) my feelings into a google doc. That's sensible, right?
> 
> Anyway, hi, new fandom, have some OT3 feels.
> 
> This is for Mindy, who rocks, and also let me yell extensively into her DMs. (I'll write that story about Rey's three-person tree hammock on Ajan Kloss later.)

The night after they win the war, only the wounded sleep.

Nights on Ajan Kloss are never totally dark. The orbital mechanics of the gas giant gleaming above create a cycle of dusk and soft daylight, sieved through the layered treetops.

Poe tries to keep up his rounds of the base, though he can barely go half a minute without somebody wanting his attention. Back-pats and hand-clasps, relief and tears, people with a dozen logistics problems, the chaos that always follows battle. He's supposed to have it all in hand now. Have the answers. Know where they go from here.

People keep pouring into the base and the forest around it. Ships land in every clearing and on every patch of rock big enough to hold one. Somebody stages a benevolent takeover of the base kitchens, every alcohol stash within five klicks is emptied in the cause of _fuck yes, we won_ , and food and drink mostly every sapient species present can enjoy appear in the big glade they use as a commons.

Add a cobbled-together sound system and the electric euphoria that soaks the air, and the chances of the situation _not_ escalating into a party become theoretical at best.

With a clarity that feels new and raw, Poe knows tonight isn't the end of the conflict. The First Order is headless, its high command dead, but the regime won't be snuffed out so easily. As soon as they're sober again, the Resistance will have their work cut out for them.

On the fringes of the celebration, people still hope and mourn. They clutch the hands of loved ones put in makeshift cots as the med bays overflow, watch the comms for emergency signals that might still come, count the injured and the dead.

Joy and grief go side by side. Poe stopped seeing the contradiction long ago.

Leia's been gone for less than a day. His old team—those who are still at this base—wants to hold a proper Black Squadron wake for Snap, and Poe will, of course he will. As soon as he can even comprehend Snap is dead. He gave Karé the news himself and barely knew what he was saying. She lost a husband, he a dear friend. All he has is a knack for fast talk.

They're not even talking about General Organa's death yet. The Resistance members know, and by morning, so will half the crowd. Leia will be toasted over and over tonight. Lanterns and fireworks will be lit for her. First here, then all over the galaxy.

He can't. Not yet. Her loss is a cut so sharp it doesn't even sting, but he knows the blood flows freely. So he walks. Loop after loop. Answers more questions. Mutters more condolences. He accepts a bite to eat from a friend, a cup of caf from a kind stranger. Anything stronger would screw with the painkillers that are holding him up. The cooling air keeps him awake.

On the upside, the official history of the Resistance won't say he missed the decisive battle because of a few bruises. On the downside, those bruises have fused together into a giant throb of pain that _is_ his left arm. The burn is pretty damn secondary to the sheer impact of the shot. Stormtrooper blasters pack a nasty punch.

They've got a handful of reports of First Order troops surrendering to local resistance or militias. Finn's going to want a first crack at them. Dismantling the entire systems-spanning regime in any kind of controlled way is going to be... Poe puts that out of his mind. It's a tomorrow problem. Tonight he only deals with issues that fit within this base.

There was a time he'd have been among the gathered crowd, dancing, talking, laughing, and later, probably tangled up with somebody in the underwood. This time he's in charge, because Leia saw something in him. In shared charge, sure, but he can hold down the fort while Finn gets a moment's respite. Finn and Rey both.

Poe is protective of them, and what of it? So he's done a ridiculous number of dangerous missions with them and knows they can hold their own. Finn is a better shot than him with any kind of gun you put in his hand, and Rey is a damn _Jedi_. Poe can still lose sleep—and nerves—over their wellbeing. At least he signed up for the Resistance with both eyes open. They were both thrust into the fight by blind chance. If there is such a thing as blind chance when you have the Force.

That's another oversized thought right there. He's not getting into the Force and its mysteries, even if it saved Rey on Exegol. She didn't say anything as she climbed down from Red Five—and there is a bird Poe wants to get his hands on in some near-future free moment he probably won't have. He could ask Rey nicely. It's kind of unfair how she keeps tripping across one legendary ship after another.

More to the point: the look on her face as she saw him and Finn will squeeze at his heart for a long time to come. She waved Poe off when he had to leave them earlier, but she was gripping Finn's hand like it was the only thing keeping her together.

Poe gets it. He doesn't want to dwell on _why_ he gets it. That way lies a perilous spiral of self-awareness, in more ways than one.

The echoing beat of the music is starting to drive a dull spike into his skull. His step falters suddenly, and the turquoise leaves of the tree above spin in his vision. Okay. He's put off going to the med bay when they're thronged with actual casualties, but he's not going to be much use if he faints selflessly in a thicket.

He didn't want to stay in the command centre. He needed to see his people, those who had and hadn't survived the battle. Needed to clasp the arms of the living and close the eyes of the dead.

They look to him now. He has to carry that weight, when he seems to barely manage his own.

 _How did you do it?_ Did he ever ask Leia that, when she could still have answered? _When we all leaned on you, what did you lean on?_

Right now, he'd take a discreet wall or tree trunk.

Before he can straighten from that thought, somebody catches him with a firm grip on his shoulder. "Easy, buddy. Night getting a little long for you?"

On Yavin 4, the small settlement where Poe grew up had stories, half superstition, half cautionary tales. If you were going beyond the fields and borders, you'd always remember: _There are things in the deep forest, echoes of your buried desires. Sometimes, at night, they put on human faces and appear to you under the trees. Watch yourself._

Poe has that same spine-tingling chill those stories used to give him, like the rainforest—the real one, damp and rife with its nightly noises—had parted to let something through. A whisper of his heart he'd like the revelry to drown out.

Then he pivots around the hand on his shoulder—that, too, real and solid—and dredges up a grin for Finn. "I was only just getting started."

"Is that why you're hiding back here? Planning your big entrance to the—dancing?" On Finn's right, Rey flicks a hand towards the commons.

"They're going at it pretty hard. I don't think I'd make much of a splash even if I did show up."

"You, with your universal appeal to nine out of ten known species and genders?" Finn seems to have concluded that Poe's having some trouble standing up. Poe would argue the notion, if only for the sake of form, but before he can, he's sat gently and irresistibly on a convenient root of the turquoise tree. "They'd notice you. General."

"Speak for yourself, General." Fine. Being lower to the ground does steady him. Especially when Finn and Rey decide to sit on either side of him, Finn's hand on his back, Rey pulling her feet up and crossing her ankles.

"It was Rey, actually. She said we should look for you."

"Is this a Force thing? I'm not sure I want you to say this is a Force thing."

"Yep," she says, dry but not unsympathetic. "I reached out for you, and you felt wobbly."

"Wobbly," Poe repeats. "Sounds like a serious Jedi assessment."

"You want me to let go of you?" Finn says. "See how fast you keel over into the loam. It looks like a soft landing."

"No." Poe gives in. He wishes he could prop himself casually against Finn, because sitting upright is also proving more precarious than he'd like.

The thing is, he could prop himself against Finn. He does it often enough; Finn is pretty generous with his personal space.

In the aftermath of the battle it feels different. They all lived, they're back, they're safe, and something about that is tender, like a bruise too fresh to show.

Poe rushes to say, "I'm fine, you worrywarts. I just need a minute."

"You've been putting out fires all night." Rey plucks at his left sleeve, which is rolled up to the elbow but still hides the dressing on his arm. "Can I see that?"

The Rey he first met might not have asked. She's still about as subtle as a thermal detonator in a Hutt court, but she shows her gentler facets around people she trusts. Mostly Finn, but Poe gets a glimpse not infrequently. Her expression sets in determined angles, then softens, as if she were unsure if she should batter or weave her way through this.

He raises a brow. "It's been bandaged. I got a _fancy_ cocktail of pain meds, real bantha tranquillisers. They are kinda wearing off, but I can ask for more, so, unless you have secret scavenger medicine?"

Finn makes a noise like Poe's being obtuse. "More like secret Jedi medicine. Remember the serpent, on Pasaana?"

Poe suppresses a wince. Even so, his unease must show on his face, and Finn and Rey both have a good grasp of his face. It's worse now that he's tired and spacing out. Finn leans in, his eyes narrowed in scrutiny with a side of honest concern. "You okay?"

Poe probably can't banter himself out of this one. "No offence, but if this involves throwing the Force around, I'd rather not."

"There's no throwing involved," Rey says, a little sharply. "I told you, it's just an energy transfer."

"Right. Just a snap of your fingers to un-snap my arm."

"I—" She drops her hand. He feels a pang of remorse for the way her shoulders slump with it. "It's not _pleasant_ , being brought back—um, being fixed that way, but I thought—"

Her puzzlement digs at his heart in a way he was not prepared for, a tight, relentless tip of pressure.

"Hey." Finn's hand is at the nape of his neck, his fingers wide, uninvited but not unwelcome, and Poe knows it's too late to furtively loosen the tension in his own shoulders. "Before you two get into it, you mind telling us what this is really about?"

Poe makes a face at the ground. The colour of the shadows is bending towards morning. The day length on Ajan Kloss is about four fifths of the galactic standard. He doesn't know how many days it's been since he and Finn picked up the intel from Boolio. In their search, they zipped from planet to planet in the nowhere time you fall into on long hauls, with only the ship's chronometer telling you which day it's supposed to be.

Today effectively split his personal history in two. Before and after the Resistance achieved its core purpose, its most important mission. The First Order has fallen. It may take its time to truly break apart, but all that's left is... clean-up. Reorganising. Rebuilding.

It's a new day for the galaxy, and Poe is tangled up in an old memory.

Movement ghosts across his shoulder. Rey's hand on top of Finn's, as if she didn't dare touch him directly. That thought puts something in him back in alignment.

What drove her into the depths of the old Sith redoubt on her own? What did she find there? She confirmed two things at the truncated briefing of surviving Resistance members: the resurrected Emperor was dead, and so was Kylo Ren. Nobody pressed her for details yet.

Poe recalls his first encounter with Ren. He still wakes from a nightmare now and then, the dark, twisted wire of the memory around his neck. The sterile torture room on the star destroyer. The sick sensation of another mind inside his own, seizing the thought it wanted. He imagines the extraction like a joint pulled inexorably out of its slick hollow, a slow, surgical agony.

He can't remember the moment. Only the stain it left in his mind, seeping into his dreams.

"I frighten you." Rey slides off the root and into a crouch in the dew-damp grass.

"Oh, for—no, of course you don't, don't be dense." Poe's word choice could be better there. "I've seen you coo over vegetable sprouts in the garden. That destroys anybody's intimidation factor."

"Yeah, it kind of does," Finn puts in, his voice edged in laughter. Then, more softly, "It's not her that's freaking you out, though, is it? It's the Force-healing."

_Stellar job distracting him from that conclusion, Dameron._

"It has occurred to you that you can talk to us. That's why you promoted me to co-General."

"I was thinking more about the burdens of command than my feelings, buddy." He's so tired, he thinks suddenly. The last year has felt like three, minimum. They didn't only have to scrape the Resistance back together, they had to keep it going, to rack up whatever resources they could throw at the First Order, whatever victories they could use to put dents in its power.

What's a handful of fears and hopes compared to that? After what they all just accomplished, this is such a small thing.

Poe pats Finn's leg, because it's the part of him within closest reach, and says to the top of Rey's bowed head, "Come back up?"

She turns so she can prop her elbows on the root, the rest of her hanging in a crouch. The light makes her eyes stand out, dark-rimmed, slanted in scrutiny. "We all have secrets."

That might be acceptance. Poe can read most of Finn's moods in his voice, but Rey's a step more removed. She makes him work a little harder.

"Just tell me one thing," Poe says. "You won't, uh, go into my head for this?"

"Not how it works," Finn says, before Rey even opens her mouth. "That's a whole other thing. She probably could, but—"

"I can tell him myself." She reaches across Poe's legs to squeeze Finn's arm, and Poe has the distinct impression they just communicated something he missed completely.

They do that a lot. Poe's run dozens of missions with Finn, knows they have a rapport in battle and easy trust and camaraderie otherwise. He feels a kinship with Rey, too, a hunch that they share hopes and loves they haven't had the chance or time to even map. He'd walk into any danger by her side and feel better about their chances for having her along. But Finn and Rey feel like they're shoots off the same root, bound by a connection into which Poe is not tapped.

He's glad they have each other. Sometimes it's a bittersweet contentment.

"Since when are you an expert on the Force?" Poe glances at Finn.

"Later. Just listen to her."

Most of the time, Rey is so self-sufficient that Poe forgets how tender she can be. He works up a smile for her, a jaunty little flash of charm. "Go on."

"I _can_ read your mind," she says, hushed. "I don't want to lie to you, so that's the truth. I could tell you to do things and you'd do them, and you wouldn't realise I'd pushed you before you were done. Maybe not even then, if I did it carefully enough. I was never good at subtle, though. Master Leia, she said—never mind. She said a lot of things, trying to set me straight."

"Bet I've heard most of them myself at some point," Poe mutters. The Jedi and their mystic arts have always been in the background of his life. His parents settled beside a sapling of their sacred tree. He grew up on stories about the Force, but it always had the gloss of legend to it, a power given to worthy heroes or terrible villains.

It gets more complicated when that same power resides in a flesh-and-blood person, a friend, somebody he knows and cherishes.

"The point is, you wouldn't do that." Finn leans forward, propping his hand on Poe's thigh to be able to look at Rey. "I could take my blaster and shoot you. That's also just about the last thing I'd ever do."

With a dry huff, she taps her palm on Finn's forearm. "Your blaster probably doesn't give you horrible visions of shooting me, but—thank you."

"Point taken, both of you." Poe tries to ignore how they're again making free with his personal space. "So Rey _could_ grind my mind into tiny little pieces, but she won't, because she's a good upstanding Jedi."

"Exactly," Finn says. "Full points for accuracy, zero for tact."

"He's right, though." Rey's angular face looks even more set in its lines than usual. "Poe. I've touched the dark side. You saw me do it on Pasaana, when I... when I blew up the transport." She sighs, straining, but her gaze doesn't flinch. "If you don't want me to help you, we'll take you to the med bay."

"Your choice." Finn's words slot into the end of her sentence.

Poe lets out a slow breath. Then, searingly aware of both their eyes on him, he unhooks the sling and stretches out his left arm. The movement sends blood rushing to his fingertips, prickling unpleasantly. The bruised muscles twinge.

Rey is still looking at him.

He tucks the sleeve up so his whole arm is bare to the shoulder. The dressing is splotched faintly with the fluids from the burn.

"Just—" His voice is gummy. He clears his throat. "Just do it."

"Finn," she says, half a request.

Finn scoots up behind Poe, wrapping an arm behind his shoulders. He's warm and steady against Poe's stiff frame. "I got you."

Poe gives in an inch to himself. He can settle back into Finn, and if his hand happens to land on Finn's and grab on, it's hardly the first time they've held hands. Rey puts one hand under his upper arm, the other on top of the injury site. He expects her to glance at him one final time, maybe, but she simply closes her eyes and inhales.

He gasps as the exhalation flows out from her and drenches him like an afternoon downpour. The feeling is eerily similar: you become aware of the cloud shadow, the tint of the light and the patter in the upper canopy, and in the next moment, you're soaked. Poe might be crushing Finn's fingers, but Finn says nothing, only braces him against the fitful current that runs from Rey in time with her breaths, lapping along his arm.

Immersion in bacta is the polar opposite of this: it mutes your senses, makes you hang still and silent while your body heals. His nerves leap to gentle, flickering life. Sweat trickles down his neck, mirrored by the beads of perspiration on Rey's scrunched brow. Finn anchors him in her surging strength. For a moment they're a system of three, moving around each other along impossible trajectories, and then Rey staggers forward.

Poe shoots out his hand to catch her. She seizes at him, jolted back into herself. His arm takes her weight with barely an effort, and he almost drops her in surprise. "Whoa."

The bruises blotted along his skin are gone, the swelling faded. His breathing is a little rough, his muscles loose and awake, like he'd just sprinted across the base on a lark.

"It worked." She touches his arm, a quiver in her fingers. "It actually worked."

"You weren't _sure_?"

"Told you," Finn says over Poe, sounding both smug and relieved.

Rey smiles at Finn, and it's like a searchlight had caught them both in its beam. The joy on her face is candid and unreserved as it breaks through her exhaustion. Again, Poe swallows an abrupt sting of sadness. They're all back. They're still together. That's all that matters.

It's a welcome diversion when Rey brusquely peels back the dressing on his arm. All that remains of the burn is a shiny, whitish scar.

"I wasn't sure I could still do it." She brushes her thumb over the scar. "After everything."

She's talking about more than being worn out by the battle. Sighing, Poe scoops her in, brings her head against his shoulder, and strokes her matted hair. "Thanks. Both of you."

"You're looking after everybody on this moon." With an utter lack of ceremony, Finn presses a quick kiss on top of Poe's head. "Somebody's got to look after you."

"Hey, _I'm_ supposed to be the battle-weary old soldier walking you through things." His protest is weak and he knows it. Underneath, his thoughts scream like a starfighter in atmospheric flight. "Stop plotting behind my back."

"Only when it's for your own good, yeah?"

"No, Poe's right," Rey says. "Earlier, when I landed and everyone was looking for each other, hugging and crying... when I saw you, I wasn't sure if—if I was allowed to go to you. I left you on Kef Bir without saying anything."

"And after you left, we fought over you leaving. Sort of." Finn points his words somewhere to the side. "It's been a really long day. You think we should itemise all the ways we managed to be bad friends, or just agree we're sorry, and also happy we all made it?"

"I've got some follow-up questions," Poe says, "but that sounds like a plan."

"Okay." Rey nods, a sharp bob of agreement. His heart does another somersault as she kisses his shoulder above the scarred spot, soft and precise. "I won't run away again."

Suddenly Poe is _done_ being attacked from both sides by these two. Slanting right, he tucks a badly aimed kiss on Finn's cheek, then a slightly gentler one on Rey's forehead. Even as she squints up at him, startled, Finn throws his head back for a low, merry laugh. "We deserved that."

"You started it." Poe manages to sound drily amused. Rey perches on his left, and her fingers skim his shirt before wrapping into Finn's behind his back, so they bracket him snugly between them.

"We're not finished yet," she says. "Who should go next?"

"I will." Finn leans into Poe's shoulder. "So, the thing I was gonna tell Rey on Pasaana? You still wanna know?"

The ache in him melts into a tired sort of sweetness for which he has little comparison. It's like between the three of them, they make a stable system, a place where he can't be dislodged. "Yeah. If you want to tell us."

So Finn does.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from 'Anthem' by Leonard Cohen.
> 
> I have a twitter @[juneofthepen](https://twitter.com/juneofthepen) if you want to say hello and/or scream about these nerds with me ♥
> 
> Or Ieave a comment below!


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